Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Question

So, I spent a couple of hours this afternoon trying to find an authoritative... answer to this question. Nothing I found satisfied me, though I'm not exactly an anthropologist or child psychologist or anything like that, so I shouldn't expect to be too successful.

Anyway:

Where do kids learn their games from? The three answers to this question are: other kids, older kids, and grown-ups. I just wonder what the proportions are. I'm pretty sure that I learned tag and hide-and-go-seek from other or older kids. Though, it is conceivable that my parents taught me the games when I was too little to remember. People should suggest their intuitions to me. Is there a self-perpetuating children's culture underneath us all, with tag being passed largely from generation to generation of children, without much significant input from adults?

Also, where does the "nyaah nyaah nyaah" song come from? I don't know the name of it. You sing it when you beat someone, or when they can't catch you. You can sing it with "nanny nanny boo boo, you can't catch me!". What is this song? Why did Freddie Mercury write "We are the Champions" around it?

I’ve never heard the version of the taunt you cited. I lived in West Nashville as a kid, maybe that explains it. I found an interesting discussion on the taunt’s musical origins and universality (click my name). It’s a great ethnomusicology question.

oh, that is excellent! it is a thickening mystery. bottle says chinese kids know the song, but they also know lots of melodies which i know are european. the korean girl in my lab knows it too, but koreans are all mixed up with americans, so who knows. the indian girl in bottle's lab didn't seem to think much of it; thought she had heard it on tv maybe... hm...

I wonder if the universality has to do with the notes in particular. When I hummed it and when I picked it out on my keyboard, I immediately produced FF DF G F, and was surprised that the pitches D and F were mentioned on the discussion site. We both know that we can start on any note and produce the song, but somehow it sounds better starting on F…maybe it’s just me.

Lending my “professional” expertise, those pitches in particular are very easy to produce in the voice, so those would be top choice for sing-song. We’re also talking about a song that has a range of a P4, making it even easier for very young children (ages 3-5) to sing. But why use the same melody for so many different lyrics? Surely it can’t be that children cannot remember a variety of melodies. That may be a cognitive musicology question. Maybe there’s something about the syllables that suggest those pitches and (roughly) the same rhythms. I would be interested if Bottle or any of your colleagues would share how the melody is used in their countries and how ubiquitous it is.

A mating call? It's possible and really worth considering, but kinda funny when you think of the song being linked to a taunt. "I ain't lettin' you touch my boobs! Nanny nanny boo boo!" I'm sorry. I need to behave.

i meant that maybe it was mating call for birds, thousands of years ago, and ape-men just picked it up because, dammit, the birds just wouldn't shut the hell up. baby-ape-men would have liked it, for sure. or first-babies-of-eve, if you swing that way.

anyway, for now we can say that the teasing song, or catching song, or whatever is an english kids song, which spread around the world back in the age of the british empire, and that's it for now.

bottle and i think that humans are genetically predisposed to generate the game of tag upon being able to run around independently. and the dissolved songmarysmith is probably right to some extent about how cats play the same games, though i don't see how peekaboo is related.

hmm... whatelse... what does everyone think of the chinese satellite destroying ballistic missile???

Peek-A-Boo significance: PAB is used to establish object permanence. Through this game, Baby learns that just because Mommy isn’t right in front of me, doesn’t mean that Mommy is completely gone forever. When Baby begins to crawl and walk, Baby learns to explore its environment. Baby seeks out things that initially were not right in front of Baby’s face. Baby also knows that Mommy is probably around, and if Baby wants Mommy, Baby will seek her. If Baby can’t find Mommy, Baby will start crying, and then the goal is that she will come to Baby.

So, PAB established that Mommy is not gone forever if immediately absent, baby goes exploring (seeking), tries to find Mommy (hidden), can’t find Mommy in this case—starts crying, wanting her to come to it (~“Ollie, ollie, oxen free”).

Not the most scientific ideas…I didn’t consider it an intuitive response (as Andrew requested) because I had to rely heavily on what I remember from Ed Psych.

I will talk about anything other than the military or politics. Sorry.

The melody, or motive,(in the key of B-flat) is FF D GF D / FaFa Ré SolFa Ré / PAPA GA DAGA PA (in Sanskrit, in any key)! My Thai girlfriend knows it too, by the way. I have these two theories (and both could be intercontected without fear of being shown to swing one way or another). One is that it's what children (more or less universally - but perhaps more since modern education system -- use to express differentiation from us adults, by immitating parents voice of plea to comply (to their orders and ranking) in a most minimalistic manner (three notes). Notice this motive involves a major pentatonic without the tonic note (Bb) itself, which in my view incinuates it by its very subtraction. "nanny nanny boo boo, you can't catch me" or put any other set of words (eg. "no time for losers 'cause we are the champions") that rhythmically fits in its place (eg. the word "differentiation" itself, perhaps). It carries a sense of positive competitiveness, much like the mood (rasa) purported in SrimadBhagavatam(Tenth Canto): GOPIS in the face of KRSNA and Radharani. What do you make of that?!